We’ve hit peak autumn color here in our area. The color is spectacularly good this year so we are making a point of getting out every day to take a ride somewhere and soak it all in. It’s truly the best foliage display we’ve had in a long time. The oranges and reds, in particular, are fantastic.

Yesterday morning instead of being parked in front of the Senate hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett to soak up history like the geek that I am, I was at the dentist. Friday evening I discovered I had chipped a crown and broken another filling. I wasn’t in terrible pain so my dentist asked if I could wait until this week to take care of it. While I wasn’t in pain, it was a nagging discomfort. So I spent the weekend being careful to not make things worse and finally got it taken care of yesterday.

The tooth thing also explains why I haven’t made any more News Stories to Watch videos. I felt just meh enough that trying to speak for a video was not what I wanted to do even though there was plenty to talk about. I have been adding lots of information to the forum so if you are looking for the best links, look there. Thank you for the kind feedback about the videos. Thank you also to the people who have shared them online and have opted to support my work via PayPal. I appreciate it very much.

Monday morning David and I started an ambitious project for my site that we had been discussing for some time. Before we started, he prayed and specifically asked that if this wasn’t the Lord’s will that He would make that obvious to us. After working on this project all morning, something went spectacularly and inexplicably wrong. Like really wrong. And really inexplicably. David works on websites all the time and he’s never seen anything like this disaster before. It made no sense. We lost all of the work we had done that morning. All of it. We were literally back to square one. Even the back-ups of what we had done had failed.

So we pulled the plug on the project. And I read this again: God’s Restraining Hand of Love.

I admit I was both disappointed and relieved. It was something I wanted to do for a number of reasons so I was disappointed by what pulling the plug on it meant. But I was also honestly relieved to know that God didn’t want me to do it.

This past Sunday I went to church for the first time since February. So much that could be said about this, but not now. I’ll simply say I was thankful to be there although the lack of singing left a hole the worship experience. God has created us to be creatures that sing. We lose an important part of our humanity when we do not do this.

It’s finally getting cool enough that I’ve restarted my evening ritual of reading by the fire. This week I’ve been focusing on Mother Culture. Much of it aligns with the parenting and homeschooling philosophy that I’ve already crafted for myself, but I find it encouraging nonetheless as Karen Andreola brings different aspects of it to light.

It’s also interesting to read Mother Culture as the homeschooling mother of a fourteen year old daughter. Most people would think this is a book for mothers with younger children who are in the process of trying to establish a home culture and way of life for mother as well. It certainly is a helpful book for mothers in that particular situation. But I find it reaffirming of where we are now as well. Our homeschooling has become much more enjoyable this year for a number of reasons which would fit better in another post. But it is almost as though we are now to the point where we are able to enjoy homeschooling in a way we never could before. I think it is because we’ve kind of abandoned the idea of eighth grade through high school being this grueling sprint to the college admissions drama. We’re approaching it much more holistically as a part of our family culture and it’s so much more meaningful. I really should write about this in depth now that I’ve started writing about it in this post.

Anyway.

In terms of homemaking items, I’m going through the seasonal clothes swap. It’s been a slow process this fall, but this week I’ll finish washing up and packing away the summer clothing and have all of the autumn and winter things ready to go. Our temperature is supposed to drop dramatically after today so we’ll be ready for sweaters and turtlenecks moving forward. I’m more than ready.

I honestly haven’t even thought past that. I’m sure other things will come to mind.

What are you working on this week? I hope you’ll leave a comment!

Artwork: “Schoolgirl with Homework” by Albert Anker